“Only sometimes when we pick and choose among the rules we discover later that we have set aside something precious in the process.”

“I know something of shame [...] How can we not all feel it? We are all small-minded people, creeping about the earth grubbing for our own advantage and making the very mistakes for which we want to humiliate our neighbors. [...] I think we wake up every day with high intentions and by dusk we have routinely fallen short. Sometimes I think God created the darkness just so he didn't have to look at us all the time.”

“You are not the first man to miss a woman's more subtle communication . . . They think they are waving when we see only the calm sea, and pretty soon everybody drowns.”

“...I tell myself it does not matter what one reads--favorite authors, particular themes--as long as we read something. It is not even important to own the books.”

“We are all small-minded people, creeping about the earth grubbing for our own advantage and making the very mistakes for which we want to humiliate our neighbors.”

“Ah yes, the dreaded one-way system. . . He and Nancy had laughed later, imagining Dante redesigning Purgatory into a one-way system offering occasional glimpses of St. Peter and the pearly gates over two separate sets of dividing concrete barriers.”

“Oh, it's simple pragmatism, Dad. It's called the real world. If we refused to do business with the morally questionable, the deal volume would drop in half and the good guys like us would end up poor. Then where would we all be?" said Roger. "On a nice dry spit of land know as the moral high ground?" suggested the Major.”